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With German military morale
in evident decline on the Western Front and revolution brewing at home -
Kaiser
Wilhelm II was himself obliged to abdicate on 9 November 1918 -
the German government determined to
negotiate an armistice with the Allies
on 6 November, having issued preliminary diplomatic feelers two days
earlier.

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Consequently on 7 November
the German Army Chief of Staff
Paul von Hindenburg exchanged
a series of telegrams with the Supreme Allied Commander,
Ferdinand Foch
(reproduced below),
to agree a date, time and place for formal negotiations. (Click
here
and
here to read Allied eyewitness accounts of the armistice negotiations;
click here to read an account by a German delegate.)

Although Germany had
insisted that it would only enter into negotiations on the understanding
that U.S. President
Woodrow Wilson's so-called
'Fourteen
Points' would form the basis for a settlement, the armistice
terms were nevertheless punitive. The Allies agreed to an armistice
only on the basis that Germany effectively disarm herself, thereby
preventing the latter from renewing hostilities.

The
Allies' armistice terms
were presented to German negotiators on 8 November 1918; alarmed at the
severity of the terms the Germans lodged formal protests before reluctantly
signing at 5 a.m. on 11 November; the armistice was to come into effect six
hours later, at 11 a.m.

German General Headquarters
to the Allies' General Headquarters; the German Commander-in-Chief to
Marshal Foch:

The German Government,
having been informed through the President of the United States that Marshal
Foch had received powers to receive accredited representatives of the German
Government and communicate to them conditions of an armistice, the following
plenipotentiaries have been named by it:

The plenipotentiaries
request that they be informed by wireless of the place where they can meet
Marshal Foch. They will proceed by automobile, with subordinates of
the staff, to the place thus appointed.